December 20, 2010

This year marks the Centenary of the Mexican Revolution. The Revolution started in November of 1910. This month, December, also marks the centenary of an act of kindness towards my grandfather by what some consider a ruthless man. Sometime in the month of December Pancho Villa and my grandfather, Rafael Andrade Avalos, met in the mountains of Michoacan and I am grateful to be able to recognize the event.

Rafael Andrade Avalos was born in Silao, Guanajuato in the 1870s. He met my grandmother, Maria Ramos, around 1900. They had a cattle ranch in Coalcoman and had three children, Domingo, Maria and Rafael. According to my mother's 1984 autobiography, my grandfather was "second officer in command" of the part of the army of Porfirio Diaz (below) that was stationed in Coalcoman. At the start of the Revolution in 1910, Rafael's job was to roust out and execute members of General Villa's army. At least two times, maybe more, he showed clemency to the rebels and spared their lives. One woman pleaded with Rafael to save her husband because they had ten children and she didn't know what she would do if he were to be taken from her. He gave him some money and a horse and told him to "get out of here and never come back -- and take care of your family". One mother pled for her only son's life. Again, a horse, some money and an admonition to to "take care of your mother!" He was sentimental and compassionate -- not the kind of qualities that would serve him well in quashing an insurrection. Traitor or sympathizer?

One hundred years ago, right about now, the third week of December 1910, my grandfather was traveling northeast through the Sierra de Apatzingan towards Guanajuato, taking his wife and son, Rafael to stay with his family during the fighting. Traveling under cover of night, my grandmother was on a horse, my grandfather and 3 year-old little Rafael were walking when a group of revolutionary solders found them took them to their hideout. When they reached their secret camp, they shoved him before the general, who looked at him for a long time and asked, "are you Rafael Andrade?" My grandfather answered, "sí mi general!" It was Pancho Villa, one of the most important and colorful figures of the Mexican Revolution. He ordered the soldiers to let go of him, "because he is my friend".

Pancho Villa and my grandfather chatted and recalled old times. He asked after my grandmother, María. Rafael told him that she was doing well, and that she was about to give birth any day. The general ordered that my grandfather be given a fresh white horse, several sugar loaves (piloncillo), beans and several tablets of chocolate. He said, "here, take this so that María will have lots of milk for the baby. That baby, Eva Maria, was born days after this incident on January 5, 1911 and she was to become my mother. Countless times, when she would make Mexican chocolate (cho-co-LAH-teh) on Saturday nights, she would recount this story to us. Years later, ever the sceptical one, I asked her, "are you sure that happened?" She always said yes and that she remembered having ridden that white horse.

Chocolate de Leche / Mexican Chocolate

1 Mexican Chocolate tablet

1 Quart whole milk

Place chocolate and milk in a heavy bottomed saucepan. Over medium heat, gradually bring milk to the boiling point, being careful not to burn. When the milk starts to rise, turn the heat down. Again, turn the heat up to make the milke rise and repeat his a third time. By this time, the chocolate will have melted. Using a molinillo, a whisk, or a hand-held electric immersion blender, beat the chocolate until it is foamy and frothy on top. Serve hot in mugs.

December 15, 2010

I am ready for winter. This year it will not catch me by surprise. The local weather prognostication predicts a wet, stormy, snowy, cold winter. If the power goes out I AM READY!! I roast my own coffee in a popcorn popper, which is a perfectly adequate way to enjoy freshly roasted coffee.I taught myself how to roast on a Primo 6-kilo roaster when I was the erstwhile owner of Villa Victoria/Cafe Mocambo. The hardest thing to give up when I closed my business was the roaster -- no, the roasting. I loved the different stages: the blue-green half seeds, each one held in a state of suspended animation with it's own potential; or the middle stage when the beans have the color of fried peanuts, ready to be salted and enjoyed with an ice-cubey lime-perfumed gin and tonic; and the last stage where their hard edges are smoothed out and they turn roley-poley like plump pillows. An Ethiopian man once told me that you should be able to see the oil of the bean just beneath the surface -- if you see the oil on the surface, you've gone too far. I got seduced by the romance of the beans -- an individual far away in Brazil picked these beans one handful at a time, until he/she picked enough to fill a sixty kilo bag and then get paid for that day! Each bean became important to me. That handful of beans, having found their way to me, here, in 98118, had been entrusted to me to bring them to their ultimate state. How could I let that coffee picker person's work all go for naught? My job was as the stonecutter's or the woodcarver's -- to bring out potential and get out of the way. Anyway, while gas prices were going up to $4.25 I got the rug pulled out from under me by COFFEE and got hooked into loving it!

I loved it so much that I vowed I would never roast decaf. Why do you want to decaffeinate a plant that has taken millenia to evolve into being caffeinated? Has anyone seen what decaffeinated beans look like? They look dead. I became the self-styled bad girl of coffee. No espresso and no decaf -- ¡que horror!

In 2006 Seattle had a 3 day-long power outtage. We had a little coffee, but no way to grind it. The fabric of human kindness began to unravel on Rainier Ave and Martin Luther King St, on Day 2. I'm still grousing about how the Starbucks on that corner could have ameliorated frayed nerves by having their employees stand outside handing out free cups of coffee. On Day 3 I asked our neighbors across the street, who had a generator, if we could grind our last bit of coffee at their house. They consented and saved us from falling into despair. Fortunately, the power came on that afternoon.

As I roasted more and more on my air popper I began to shed my disdain for the medium. I began to realize that the beans don't know or care if the heat is fire or electric -- it's the person roasting not the roasting equipment. The original Ethiopian mother, whose goat-hearding son brought back the berries on which his goats had gotten frolickey, didn't have a gas-fueled Probat 5 roaster. She had a hearth and a pan. It's the person roasting, not the roasting implement.

In the coffee-industrial complex (grow> pick>process>transport>roast>sell) the penultimate step, the roasting, is the weakest link in the chain. Roasted coffee does not remain fresh very long -- at the most a week and a half then it starts to precipitously degrade. When was your big box coffee roasted? If you get 5 lb. at a time, how can you possibly drink all of it in time?

This winter if the power goes out I will be ready for any eventuality. I will simply light my gas stove, put some beans in my roasting pan, fill my tea kettle with water, grind the beans in my Kyocera ceramic blade grinder, and put the hot water and the beans together in a simple press pot. I will be totally off the grid, not dependent on someone else in a big box to roast my coffee, not beholden to the electric company, except maybe, the gas company.